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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday it would stop reporting or monitoring COVID-19 case data and transmission rates after the government ends the pandemic's public health emergency designation next week.

The agency will stop using its color-coded COVID-19 Community Levels (CCL) system, which relies on those metrics to track the spread of the virus and will instead primarily rely on hospital admission data.

The government on May 11 will end the COVID-19 public health emergency that allowed millions of Americans to receive vaccines, tests, and treatments at no cost during the pandemic.

"The changes that we're discussing today are happening because the end of the Public Health Emergency means that CDC will have less authority to collect certain types of public health data," said CDC Principal Deputy Director Dr. Nirav Shah.

The current CCL system relies in part on aggregate case rates, he told reporters on a press call, but some local jurisdictions may stop reporting that data after May 11.

"There has been a 99% concordance between the community levels, which are being retired, and the new hospital admission driven metrics," he said.

"We will still be able to tell that it's snowing, even though we're no longer counting every snowflake." Head over to Medscape to read the full story.